


443. falling skies

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [310]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 15:53:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10834458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Helena licked a piece of the sky and it tasted like sugardust and porcelain, but when she bit it her teeth hummed so she doesn’t try that anymore.





	443. falling skies

**Author's Note:**

> [warning: self-harm]

The sky is a big blue bowl cracked open. Shards of it keep dropping towards the ground. Helena found one and licked it and it tasted like sugardust and porcelain, but when she bit it her teeth hummed so she doesn’t try that anymore. In the space where the sky used to be there’s nothing but dark, like the air above their heads learning how to be hungry. Helena stares at it and waits for it to blink first. It does not blink first.

“Stop,” Sarah says, from behind her. Sarah is one of the people who has stopped looking up, now that the sky is falling all to pieces. Helena lowers her head and looks at Sarah. Sarah keeps her hood up all the time, now. Sarah keeps her shoulders hunched.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Helena says, which is only a little bit a lie.

“Get back inside,” Sarah says. Helena puts her hands in the pockets of Alison’s borrowed sweater and follows her back in. There’s a shard of sky in her pocket that she hasn’t told anyone about. When she cut herself with it it moved right through her skin like it was nothing, and her muscles shivered and ached. The blood doesn’t stain the sky. She doesn’t know when it vanished, but it’s gone.

It’s only a little piece. Sarah, it’s only a little one.

They go back inside. Outside the sky is cracking all to bits, even though Helena can’t hear it. She knows. The sky looks like her back, now, which should probably be bad. A small cutting of sky in her pocket. A small one. Tiny.

The food that’s left in the cabinets is running low, because Sarah won’t go outside to buy more. S left to go grocery shopping this morning; she brought her rifle. Helena doesn’t know when she’ll be back. The sky is making people crazy. It isn’t making Helena crazy. It isn’t, she promises.

Sarah finds a package of stale cookies. She pulls out a plastic sleeve, hands it to Helena. Helena bites down. Tastes like dust. When she’d licked the sky—

“I keep telling you not to go outside,” Sarah says, voice thrumming. The sky is making Helena think bad things, like: if she pressed the sky-knife in her pocket against Sarah’s throat, how would it look. That’s not Helena going crazy, though, that’s not the sky’s fault, that’s just how she thinks sometimes, she forgot to for a while but it’s the way her mind moves.

“Sorry,” Helena says. She nudges the roll of cookies back across the table towards Sarah. Sarah doesn’t take one. Ever since the sky broke Sarah has been feeding everyone else, but Sarah won’t feed Sarah.

“You have to eat,” Helena says. She folds her arms on the table and rests her head on them.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Lies,” Helena says. She draws the word out, like something you could cut into pieces. The sky in her pocket is weightless. She closes her eyes and watches things explode behind her eyelids. When she slits her eyes open again Sarah is frowning at her. Helena pokes the cookie package again until Sarah rolls her eyes, grabs a cookie, and bites it between her teeth. Chews. Swallows. “Happy?” she says.

“Yes,” Helena says. This is not a lie: she’s very happy. It goes in and out like static but these days she’s happy all the time. She thinks.

“Helena,” Sarah says, and Helena opens her eyes. “Please. Please stop going out there, alright?”

“Okay,” Helena says, the sharp _k_ sound, the way it cuts, sky itching in her pocket, the hole above her where it used to be that she can feel in her shoulders. The sooner this conversation is over, the sooner she can go back outside. She has to go back outside. The sky is outside. The sky is outside, and it’s lonely, and she’s lonely too, and they’re two holes that can fit inside each other. Sarah would get it if she just looked up enough. Helena could pull the hood down from her head, slowly; Helena could take the sky and cut that hood off. She could press the sky against Sarah’s throat until it bled just a little and Sarah’s head was tilted back and her eyes reflected the shards of blue—

She’s shaking. Sarah’s hand is on her shoulderblade. Helena thinks for a second that the sky might be driving her crazy, but that thought is a shard and it’s falling and the place where it was is black.

“Sarah,” she says, “I took a piece of it.”

“Shit,” Sarah says. “Where is it.” Helena can feel her humming, like a piece of metal struck, and she starts crying just because of how much Sarah would love it. Sarah would understand that she and the holes in the world are the same thing, the way that Helena and the emptiness are the same thing, but Sarah won’t look. It breaks Helena’s heart into small pieces and they all fall all the way down. Sugar and dust and porcelain.

She’s crying because Sarah already loves the sky. Sarah loves things that she can fight against – that’s who she is, Helena knows, Helena knows that the sky knows. The sky shattering is the best thing that’s ever happened to Sarah. Helena’s sister is built for the end of the world.

Helena pulls the sky out of her pocket and puts it on the table. It’s so blue; it has no depth or shadow. Sarah folds her sleeve over her hand and picks it up. “How long,” she says.

“I don’t know.”

“Shite,” Sarah breathes. She takes the sky away from Helena. She carries it out of the door. Helena shoves the chair back and stumbles after her, desperate, licking her tongue all around the inside of her mouth to taste something. Anything.

Sarah throws the sharp sky out into the world. It flips end over end and hits the ground, doesn’t break. It just lies there. Helena stares at it, fills her eyes with it, and Sarah yanks her back inside and slams the door.

Sarah’s hands are on her shoulders. “ _Listen to me_ ,” she says. “Don’t you _dare_ go out there, alright? You cannot handle this shit. I know you think you can, but you can’t. It’s killing you, meathead.”

A long time ago Helena used to tell Sarah not to call her this. She doesn’t really mind it anymore. She lifts up her hand and puts it up against Sarah’s throat, but they’re inside so it doesn’t mean anything.

“Helena,” Sarah says, and she shakes Helena’s shoulders once. “Tell me you’re not going back out there.”

“I won’t,” Helena says.

“No,” Sarah says. “Say it so I bloody _believe you_.”

“I won’t,” Helena says again. She twists Sarah’s hair around her fingers. It’s so dark, but also it’s not really that dark. Helena could show Sarah what the dark looks like, if they went outside.

Sarah lets out a shaky thin sigh and shakes Helena’s hand out of her hair, grabs it and pulls Helena to the back bedroom. She pushes Helena inside. The door closes; the door locks. Helena is left in a room with no windows. Helena’s mind is so blue, and bits of it break away from her all the time.

She sits down by the wall, leans her head against the cold of it, closes her eyes. In her dreams the sky is breaking, and she knows exactly how it sounds.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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